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SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS/WORKSHOPS

On stage or in a living room, I share stories, ideas, and strategies to facilitate breakthrough and joy. I bring my passion for deep inquiry and human connection to your event. I definitely exude humor and poise.

My talk "That's Not Funny": Feminism, Motherhood, and Finding Your Way addresses issues that badass, independent women face during the transition to motherhood.

I present the Non-Attached to Outcome Motivational Interviewing (NAOMI) workshop with social worker Margaret Mary Downey. NAOMI is our approach to Motivational Interviewing, incorporating Buddhist ideas of mindfulness and impermanence. It helps people get unstuck!

bio

bio

Svea Vikander is a Swedish-Canadian communications generalist and mental health professional. Currently residing in Berkeley, California, she is happiest when something unusual, risky, or beautiful is happening. With her co-host Gregory Scharpen, she interviews cultural producers for Arts in Review, the longest-running arts radio show in the Bay Area. Broadcast on KALX Berkeley 90.7FM at 12pm each Thursday, the show also livestreams here.

Svea is the founder of Studio Béluga, a work, performance, and exhibition space established in a converted warehouse in Montréal, Québec. Between 2009-2011, she helmed a team of creative professionals, curating the work of over 60 artists, coordinating international residencies, eliciting wide media coverage, and cleaning up after too many wine-fueled parties. Today, the project functions as a Canada-wide curatorial collective led by Alina Maizel, an original co-founder and pictured above, left.

Svea has produced written, audio, and visual content for individuals, non-profits, businesses, and activist collectives. She has contributed to a lefty Canadian news source, radical mental health zines, parenting blogs, gallery catalogues, a novelty twitter account impersonating the Toronto Library System, and the Swedish journal Feministiskt Perspektiv. Svea has presented work at conferences held by Concordia University, Montreal; University of Toronto; and Goldsmith's University, London.

As a mental health professional, Svea specializes in ADHD treatment and maternal health; she also loves helping people create the careers of their dreams. She has held a small private practice for over a decade and holds an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Goddard College, VT. Svea recently spent a year providing therapy and guidance to low-income families at the Homeless Prenatal Program, San Francisco. She has two kids, no pets, and a wardrobe of unbearably (unwearably) heavy vintage clothing.

Press

coverage & Notoriety

Press

coverage & Notoriety

highlights

Interview by Riaz Behra and Maddy Anders on The Rational (Vancouver Co-Operative Radio) about Women Who Tell, in which I wrote about my experiences of sexual violence for 29 consecutive days for rabble.ca. Starts at the 30 minute mark. February 29th 2016. *No longer available online.

Caitlin Leroux wrote about HEIR/LOOMS, an exhibition on which I worked as a curatorial consultant, for The Link newspaper. Curated by Nicole Dawkins at Studio Béluga, the show explored the connections between textile, work, and memory. August 30th, 2011.

Peter Matthews reviewed the project to which I contributed for Pop Montréal, a set of art and installationsorganized by Artist Bloc for Charles Spearin's award-winning album The Happiness Project(Arts & Crafts). A photo of the piece I contributed is included. October 4th, 2009.

Interview by Riaz Behra and Maddy Anders about Women Who Tell, in which I wrote about my experiences of sexual violence for 29 consecutive days as published on rabble.ca and inspired by the Jian Ghomeshi trial. Interview starts at the 30 minute mark. February 29th 2016. *No longer available online

Jeff Perera, a member of Canada's National Speakers Bureau and founder of the annual'What Makes a Man' conference, discusses my project Women Who Tellin his talk about gendered violence, presented to a range of audiences. Ongoing.

Annie, who runs an excellent personal narrative and resource blog called Rebel Recovery, shared some of my thoughts on the impact of remaining friends with and enabling known abusers. February 26th, 2016.

Quoted via twitter by Jill Di Donato (for Romper.com, a Bustle offshoot), talking about the actions (standing up and being nice) that had Rose Hamid escorted from a Trump rally. I discuss the harassment I received as a consequence of this tweet here. January 9th 2016.

Megan Elyse Waterman cited my writing about the rhetoric of anti bed-sharing campaigns in her article for the Tulsa Law Review about the legality of enforced vaccination. I did not write about vaccines but she still doesn't like what I have to say. Summer 2015.

Lori Beth de Hertogh discussed Birth Without Fear, an online resource/community devoted to women's bodily empowerment in maternal health for which I was an active administrator and contributor in 2012-2014, in her paper for Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. While my contributions to Birth Without Fear are accurately characterized, this paper erroneously attributes to me a quote from a birth story I sourced and edited. April 2015.

This book included a photograph from and a description of Life Lines, a visual, narrative, and interview archive I created in 2006 to explore the ways that people use familial and self-defining narratives in order to understand and accept their physical scars. The book is co-authored by Fred Vanderbom and Ian Rogers. February 26th, 2014.

User greenkozi entered my community activism/relational aesthetic project Pots Over Temescal (POT) into the Oakland Local Wiki. The project helped people to feel neighborly and caring in response to the rise in muggings (and increasing trends of employing private security to patrol the streets) in my Oakland neighborhood. Pots Over Temescal culminated in an anti-mugging march. October 7th, 2013.

Caitlin Leroux wrote about HEIR/LOOMS, an exhibition on which I worked as a curatorial consultant. Curated by Nicole Dawkins at Studio Béluga, the show explored the connections between textile, work, and memory. August 30th, 2011.

Peter Matthews reviewed the project to which I contributed for Pop Montréal, a set of art and installations organized by Artist Bloc for Charles Spearin's award-winning album The Happiness Project (Arts & Crafts). A photo of the piece I contributed is included. October 4th, 2009.

CTV News covers one of many vigils for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women supported by, among other organisations, Missing Justice. Missing Justice (Justice en Attente) is a grassroots activist collective of which I was a committed member from 2009-2011.

Bryn Weese reports on reactions to the Canadian government's refusal to fund the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. The article also describes the sit-in I helped to coordinate at Indian Affairs Ministor Chuck Strahl's Parliament office. March 29, 2010.

CBC Ottawa, CBC Yellowknife, and CBC North reported on the sit-in that I and other members of Missing Justice (Justice en Attente) coordinated at Chuck Strahl's Parliament office after the Canadian government's refusal to fund the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. March 29, 2010. *No longer available online.

Interviewed for Liquid Lunch on ThatRadio.Com (now ThatChannel.com) by Milena Vigliotta and Hugh Reilly. We talked about the fairytale in which a woman's husband unties the ribbon she wears around her neck and her head falls off. *No longer available online.

Interviewed on Cat & Taylor's Spiritual Feast about my experience of sexual exploitation in a Buddhist monastery. I also wrote about the experience for Pathologize This II, a zine about mental health curated by Sarah Tea Rex (Montréal) and on rabble.ca.